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Noize Punishment: the future of jihad?

Noize Punishment aka Jindrich Brejcha is a one-man act from the Czech Republic, and as the name suggests, an absolutely punishing experience. Do you remember Atari Teenage Riot? Gabba techno beats, distorted hardcore/metal guitars, shouty political lyrics? Noize Punishment takes the concept a few steps further, mixing grindcore and breakbeats into a infernal racket that will make your neighbours think construction works are taking place in your bedroom. Hearing Noize Punishment for the first time gave me a buzz similar to my first exposure to Napalm Death‘s From Enslavement To Obliteration or Einstuerzende Neubauten‘s Kollaps, except there’s a lot more structure to those. Noize Punishment is, in contrast, a noise collage without vocals: you get a few seconds of disjointed breakbeats, followed by moments of absolutely bestial grindcore, crunchcore, and probably gnashcore too, interspersed with white noise and political samples, and then back. You feel like you’ve been thrown into a blender.

Now noise music has been done a million times and is -despite the delusions of art students still out to destroy music/rock’n’roll/Western civilization- in fact older than rock’n’roll itself: Luigi Russolo‘s industrial noisefest Gran Concerto Futuristico dates back to 1917. But I promise it hasn’t been done the Noize Punishment way, and I’d be extremely curious to witness the noize production process live. Maybe I’m demented, but I actually get a kick out of listening to these aural violations, which is more than I can say about most self-consciously “arty” racket merchants. This stuff makes Slayer sound like the Beach Boys.

Judging by his milieu and the imagery he uses, I can only conclude the man is an anarchist, and I mean anarchist in a political, left-wing sense rather than just someone who “breaks the rules”, let alone a – hahaha – “National Anarchist“. The one quote about anarchism that rings the truest to my ears is Stewart Home’s claim that anarchists “can’t even organise a piss-up”. This is absolutely the case. A while ago, I had the misfortune of witnessing the formative stages of an ‘undogmatic’ anarchist group in London. Over four successive weekends, the aspiring members failed to meet up in the correct pub at the correct time. Some never showed up at all while others kept missing each other, even though the directions were crystal clear and the venues fairly small. Then everybody got into email arguments with everybody else and the project was called off.

I considered inviting Noize Punishment to play in London last year, but he asked for £200 on top of the return flight fare, and I’m not a professional promoter. I couldn’t help wishing back the days when punk bands were happy to have their coach fare paid and spend the night in a filthy squat.

I would have also loved to present you with a few quotes from the great Noize Punisher himself. Unfortunately, he was too busy to reply to my interview questions. In true anarchist style, he kept confirming he would eventually get around to email me his replies, until one and a half months later he decided he didn’t actually have the time. Even my suggestion of doing it telephonically didn’t meet with approval. To me, it was the first time someone turned down an interview, but then I had never set out to interview a real anarchist before.

Perhaps he just didn’t like my questions. I will leave you with those three that I was particularly eager to hear an answer to (see below). Maybe you can try and answer them instead? Or maybe the Noize Punisher en personne will eventually stumble upon this and reply? It might help to restore my confidence in the future of libertarian left politics. In the meantime, check out his noise. It’s excellent!

1. Loud, noisy music can express a variety of things, i.e. aggression, sexual frustration, neurosis… What do you think does your music style express?

2. Was it a conscious decision to make music that nobody could dance to, and why would you want to do that?

3. Listening to music produced by anarchists (anarcho-punk, grindcore, digital hardcore, yours), it strikes me that most of it is completely asexual. Do you think this reflects that anarchists prefer to sidestep or deny sexuality rather than deal with it?